College of Marin gets younger while Marin County gets older

Marin County is growing older fast, but the student body at College of Marin is getting younger even faster — at least in the arts.

At a time when the first wave of Marin's "silver tsunami" is leading the way for an even larger surge of seniors to come, state regulations preventing students from repeating classes they have already successfully completed are forcing out older adults who have made up a significant portion of the student body at College of Marin, where 40 percent are 35 and older. Of those, 19 percent are over 50.

Under regulations that took effect last fall, students are no longer allowed to take classes in art, music, drama and dance, as well as physical education, as many as four times, as they had been in the past.

"We have lost students who have been here for a while taking classes," said David Snyder, College of Marin's dean of arts and humanities. "But generally there are younger, newer students who have filled in."

Younger students may have filled in, but apparently not in numbers equal to those squeezed out. As the fall semester begins, enrollment for the college as a whole is down, according to Snyder, and the usual waiting lists for fine arts classes have disappeared. He said all the classes have "healthy" enrollments, though, and no classes have been cancelled.

"The college has been expremely supportive in allowing classes with a low enrollment to run," said Lisa Morse, head of the drama deparment, noting that some classes in her department have had as few as six students. "If the school suddenly starts saying you have to have 15 people in Drama 160, for example, in order to have a class, then we're going to have a real problem because we're not going to get 15 people."

The recession, rising fees, changes in financial aid and a budget-driven reduction in classes have led to a drop in enrollment, officials said. From fall 2011 to spring 2014, enrollment fell among all sectors — credit, noncredit and community education students. For example, there were 8,170 credit students in fall 2011. That number fell to 6,858 by the spring of 2014, a decline of 16 percent.

'Timed out'

Judy Bernhardt, a Novato woman in her 50s, is one of the many older students who have timed out under the new restrictions.

"It's horrifying," she said. "Many of the people I've been in classes with have timed out as well."

Bernhardt works full-time as a bookkeeper and still has young children at home. She is trying to learn to be a fine art painter and has taken painting classes repeatedly at the college's nearby Indian Valley campus to develop and refine her skills.

"I know other people like myself who have no other place to paint," she said. "This is taking the community out of community colleges."

With continuing education students like Bernhardt unable to register for the fall semester, which began last week, painting instructor Chester Arnold, a renowned artist who used to have long waiting lists for his classes, has been forced to advertise for new students, printing posters and tacking them up on college bulletin boards.

"Our challenge now has been to recruit younger students back into our program," he said. "That has never been a problem before, but now we run the risk of having classes cancelled because they are below a minimum of students."

Lifelong learning

In the 1990s, with many Marin high school graduates going on to four-year colleges and universities, the College of Marin placed its emphasis on lifelong learning, beginning a campaign to attract older adults to fill its classes in visual arts, music and drama.

"In 1996, I designed a flyer and very conspicuously included photographs of older people working in the jewelry lab and the ceramics lab because that was the population that had the leisure time to take classes," recalled Bill Abright, chairman of the fine arts department.

Department heads stretched the four-class limit by adding classes to "families" of courses. Continuing education students could take these related classes four times each, allowing them to study in their discipline for as long as a decade in some cases, becoming accomplished artists in the process.

Some of them have created notable public art projects, including the obelisk in front of the San Anselmo fire station and a series of animal tiles for San Anselmo's Millennium Playground.

But because of budget cuts forcing the state to ration education, they will no longer be able to repeat courses they have been taking for years.

'Those days are gone'

"It used to be we could be all things to all people," said then-Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott in a press release announcing the mandate two years ago. "Those days are gone, and now we have to focus on those with the greatest need."

Those with the greatest need, according to the chancellor's office and the board of governors, are students seeking job training or pursuing undergraduate degrees by studying for two years in community colleges before transferring to four-year universities.

"Restricting students' ability to repeat state-subsidized courses will help all of us focus on the priorities of providing basic skills in English and mathematics, certificate and degree attainment and transfer preparation," said Scott, who has been succeeded by Brice W. Harris. "It doesn't make sense for us to allow students to take the same course four times on the taxpayers' dime while we are closing our doors on those looking for a degree or seeking job skills."

There are 112 community colleges serving 2.1 million students in the California system, the largest in the U.S. According to the chancellor's office, budget cuts have forced them "to turn away hundreds of thousands of students from our campuses" who want to pursue a degree.

That is not the case at the College of Marin. Because of the new regulations against repeating classes, students are being turned away because they aren't interested in pursuing a degree, just improving as artists.

According to the most recent census data, Marin, with a median age of 41.3, is aging more than 2-1/2 times as fast as the rest of the state. Census data show that fewer than 13,000 residents were between the ages of 15 and 19.

A new civil grand jury report, "Aging in Marin: What's the Plan?" notes that in 2014 a fourth of the county's population is 60 or older, and a third of Marin's 121,000 residents will be that age by 2030.

Moving into the future

Since a $250 million bond measure was passed by voters in 2004, a new fine arts building has been built on the Kentfield campus and a new academic center is under construction, causing some instructors to complain about the campus being in a permanent state of disruption. As part of the college's youth movement, the administration has induced 25 veteran teachers to retire and new faculty members have been hired to replace them. College President David Wain Coon has hired 46 new full-time instructors out of 107 on staff.

"This is what needs to happen for College of Marin to move into the future," said Abright, a longtime ceramics instructor. "We've got new buildings, a new look, new faculty, so here we go for the next 50 years. We wouldn't have been able to sustain the path we were on because we were relying too much, I think, on senior community members who were our foundation."

Vivien Bronshvag, a former state legislator who has been studying painting at College of Marin but has now timed out, has been in the forefront of the fight against the new rules prohibiting students such as herself from repeating classes.

"It's been an ongoing battle," she said. "Older students are taxpayers, too. It's very unfair."

Is auditing the answer?

The protest may have had some impact on the College of Marin's Board of Trustees. Word is just getting out that it has agreed to allow timed-out students to audit classes for no credit if there is room and the instructor agrees to let them in.

That may help keep some older students in the classroom, which would be a relief to instructors like Trevor Bjorklund, head of the music department. A College of Marin graduate himself, he recalls how much he benefitted from having seasoned musicians beside him in the college symphonic band when he was a student. Traditionally, elders have shared their experience, skills and wisdom with younger students in the many art and music classes in which beginners and accomplished artists work side by side. Without them, instructors will no longer have the mentors they have relied on for years.

Bjorklund is one of the faculty leaders supporting and implementing the audit idea.

"The thing about auditing is it's new," he said. "We're trying it for the very first time this semester and we're still working out the kinks. But the idea is that it opens the door to people having trouble with the repeatability issue. It's no longer just about trying to get everybody to transfer to a university, it's admitting that some people aren't here for that. A community college has to be there to serve that other purpose. You have to have people in the class who are there because they want to enrich their lives, not because they want to transfer to San Francisco State."